[0:29] When I was first married, I lived about a block and a half away from the train tracks. And if you've ever been stopped by a train, you know that no matter how straight the track seems, you can never seem to see more than four or five trucks down the track. You never know if you're going to have 5, 10, 15, 20, or 100 trucks go by before you can get over the train track.

[1:00] But as I was living there, one day I turned down the road to go home, and I saw a train crossing the tracks. And as I looked to the left, I could see the beginning of the train. As I looked to the right, I saw the end of the train. It was so cool because I could see the whole train moving across the road at one time.

[1:20] And I thought, this is what it's like seeing life from God's perspective. I am at the stoplight right in front of the train track, and I can only see a number of trucks going by me. God, on the other hand, is stepping back, and he sees my whole life in front of me at one time. He sees the events from today and how it affects the events for tomorrow. And that is perspective that I want you to try to get a hold of and grasp today. Perspective is seeing life from a specific point of view. Your perspective is different than your mindset because your mindset is how you think. Perspective is how you see. And this begs the question, from what specific viewpoint are you viewing the world? We tend to ask this question, and we tend to concern ourselves with perspective more often when things don't go well. Because when we have problems with things, we have trials, things break down, we stop and say, why is all this bad stuff happening to me? I'm trying to do right. Why do I always get in trouble? We ask these things because we want to make sense of the world. It doesn't seem right that I, a good person, have to go through all these troubling things. I'm doing good. Why can't good things happen to me? Why are all these bad things happening instead?

[2:50] We desire to have peace and joy and contentment, prosperity in life. But when these aren't coming to us at a respectable rate, an acceptable rate, we tend to ask why. Why me? And it's interesting that we naturally and involuntarily look at every circumstance that happens to us and evaluate it through the lens of me. How does this affect me? How does this conflict affect me? How does this thing breaking down affect me? The challenge today, my friends, the challenge is to change our perspective and to see life from God's point of view. Just as I saw the whole train at one setting, let's see if we can see our whole life or at least see more of our life rather than just the few boxcars running in front of us. There are three truths I want to share with you today. First of all, God's perspective is more accurate than our perspective.

[3:57] God's perspective is more accurate than our perspective. What we see and what God sees are two very different things. Look at Joseph. Joseph's life was ruined. He was thrown into a well. He was dragged out of a well, sold into slavery to some traders, sold to Potiphar, then thrown into jail, then kept in jail. At one time. And later on, he was raised to be a ruler in Egypt, and God used him to move his family to Egypt. Looking at things in front of the train tracks, stopped in front of the trains, his life was in ruins, continually in ruins, continually in slavery, continually things not going well. But when you step back and look at the whole of his life, you see things did go well for him. God used him to bring the children of Israel to the land of Egypt. It was God's purpose that was accomplished in Joseph's life. We desire joy, peace, contentment, prosperity, abundance in life. And when these things don't come to us, that's a lot of times when we start to ask why. Remember the train. Are you looking at life as if you are just in front of the tracks? Or are you looking at life from behind the tracks where you can see the whole train at one time?

[5:10] Here's a caveat. Sometimes we don't always see the whole train. Sometimes in our life we may never see the complete reasons why bad things happened. Joseph was able to see why these bad things happened. And at the end of his life, he was able to benefit from that. Sometimes that doesn't happen for us. But we need to trust God anyway. So, the first truth in trying to shift our minds and shift our perspective, change our perspective, is to realize that God's perspective is more accurate than our perspective.

[5:47] The second point, the second truth I want to talk to you about is that from God's perspective, your business exists because of God. From God's perspective, your business exists solely because of God. Psalm 127 verse 1 says, unless the Lord builds a house, they labor in vain that build it. Unless the Lord watch the city, the watchman watches but in vain.

[6:13] You see, just as a builder builds, if God doesn't build it up and say that this is what he wants to build, it's going to get destroyed.

[6:23] Your business is no different. You have spent time building your business, but if God didn't want it to exist, it would not have lasted. So, if you have a business today that's lasted more than a year or two, or three years and is prospering, I want you to step back and realize that God has deemed your business worthy of existence. Your business is important. It's not just because of you, but God has a reason for your business and that your business exists today. Remember that reason.

[6:58] And number three, the truth number three is you need God's glasses. You need God's glasses to see correctly in life.

[7:09] I have a number of glasses, and they each serve different purposes. First of all, I have sunglasses that protect my eyes from the sun. I can see well in the bright sunlight. Those I use quite often. I also have another pair of glasses, which are safety glasses, and it will protect my eyes from things flying in my face, Whether I'm weed whipping or working on a saw or working on a machine, it protects my eyes so that things don't get into my eye and damage my eyesight. And finally, I have another pair of glasses, which are prescription glasses. And these glasses have special lenses that will help me see objects around me more clearly.

[7:57] Two of these glasses protect my eyes, but only one of them would change and correct my vision so I can see objects more clearly. You need God's glasses. If you don't have God's glasses yet then you need them so that you can see life more clearly. Over 15 years ago, I was going to the grocery store with my daughter, and I did not know exactly where things were at, and we were looking for some spaghetti. And so, I told her, I want you to look up on those signs that are in between the aisles and look for words. Look for the word pasta or sauce, tomato sauce, because if we can see the word pasta, that's the aisle we need to go down. And she said, what words? I said, those signs up in the middle of the aisle, there's words on them. Just look at those words. And she's like, I don't see those words. They're blurry.

[8:52] And that was the first time where I realized that my daughter couldn't see more than 15 to 20 feet and read signs and read words. Everything was blurry to her. She also did not know that she had an eyesight problem. She figured she'd grown up this way, that this was always how life was. This is how everybody saw. And so now we were able to take her in and get some prescription glasses with good lenses so she's going to be able to see further down the road. You and I are like that. If we have never stepped back and seen the train from a distance, you need glasses. You need God's glasses to be able to see your entire life instead of looking at each individual circumstance in your life as if it affected you positively or negatively. Friends, life is bigger than you and me. God's purpose is so much bigger than you and me. We need to step back and look at all of life. We need to step in order to get and have peace and joy, contentment, prosperity, freedom, abundant life. We need to see life from God's perspective. You and I need God's glasses.

[10:11] In 2020, the world was rocked by a worldwide pandemic.

[10:18] Economies rumbled, and things did not go well. My life was in upheaval as well, not because of the pandemic, but because of something specifically that happened to me. I call it my vision 2020 story. It goes like this. I, in 2020, was employed in a prominent manufacturing place in our community. I've been wanting to get into this place for 15 years. And finally, I was there. I'd been there for a year or more. And I was an engineer, manufacturing engineer. here. It's prosperous, learning, growing, thriving, making my plans for maybe moving to a different position in this company, but I could see myself retiring from this company. It was a good job.

[11:05] Then I got fired because I was trying to be humorous but did it in the wrong context. That was hard. I did something stupid. I got fired. And for the next week or two, I was continually beating myself up saying if I had only not done that thing, If I only thought before, if I only acted different, I wouldn't be in this circumstance. I'd still be going to work. I'd still be getting a paycheck. Life would still be going fine. I don't know why I did that. I was blaming myself and being really, really hard on myself. And during that time, it was a very dark time in my life. Very hard, very difficult. There were times where I had two weeks left of income. It's a time when I have one week left of income. God would always provide me a little bit more and a little bit more, a little bit more until finally I was able to get unemployment come through. I was able to get a gap job to help me keep going. And so, God provided. God provided for me. But as the story goes, when I was about five months in at work, I got a call from a recruiter. And the recruiter said, hey, David, good news for you. I have another position opening for you. And I said, okay, well, what company is this with? And he told me the name of the company. I said, all right, well, who is the hiring manager for this company? And he gave me the name of the hiring manager.

[12:28] And I stopped. I said, Alex, I interviewed with this man last October. He didn't want me then. Why would he want me now? And I didn't want to go forward. And Alex is like, come on, David, what's the problem? What's the worst that could happen? The worst that could happen is you could say no. Why don't you go ahead? Let me throw in your application.

[12:54] I finally succumbed to his encouragement, and I sent my application in. Because of that application, I actually did get an interview and actually got hired in that job within a month later. I was working as a process engineer at a completely different company. Loved it up until that time. Again, it was better than the last job I got fired from. Very nice people. But what was interesting is with this new position, they expected engineers to have 20-20 vision. Because they made a lot of small parts and they did a lot of small laser engraving on these parts. And so, they wanted the engineers to be able to see correctly, see 20-20 vision. And so one of the orientation things I had to do is I had to go to the eye doctor, and read this text out of a book that was super small and to show that I had 20-20 vision. Well, you know, I figured I hadn't had a real eye exam in over 10 years. I might as well go get an eye exam and see if I need glasses because I knew I needed readers to get to be able to read and pass this book test, because of how the words were small.

[14:07] And so I got my eye exam, did a retinal scan, tested for peripheral vision, and did all these tests. We got called back about a week later and the doctor said, well, how do you think you did on your test? I'm like, I did okay. Okay, I didn't like the test, but it went okay. And he's like, okay, well, the reason I called you back here is because you did actually fairly well with that, but we have another issue here. So, you have a high pressure inside your eyes, and we have diagnosed you as having glaucoma in both your eyes. And there is, from the retinal scan, there's actually you a little bit of damage in your right retina.

[14:49] And so I kind of sat there, kind of shocked with this diagnosis. Like wow, I have glaucoma. Glaucoma is considered the silent blinder. If you don't catch glaucoma, if you don't treat it, you will slowly lose your eyesight and not even feel it until one day things will start to get blurry and you can go in and try to get glasses, but glasses won't fix it because your vision is going bad. So, it was a shock to hear that and to wrap my head around that. But after I started thinking about it, I realized after putting God's glasses on, thar this was a blessing. This whole thing, this whole six months, I've been off work. I got fired six months ago. And I realized, looking at all the events, I had to be fired from my job, so I could get hired at this position, so I could go to eye exam, so I could get diagnosed with glaucoma, so I could get it taken care of, so that I could keep my eyesight.

[15:53] It's a long trail of ifs and buts and whatever, but God had his hand in this whole thing. I believe God took me from the one place and brought me to this place because I wasn't getting my eyes checked just so I could retain my eyesight. You know, God is so good. Even though we go through trials and hardships sometimes, God always does it for a reason. And I'll tell you that I had a paradigm shift because of this. My perspective has eternally changed, and I cannot call things bad anymore. It's really hard for me to call things bad because I don't know how God's going to use them. God may use this bad thing to do something good later on, just like Joseph as well. God had him thrown in a well, sold as a slave, thrown into prison to keep him in Egypt, to make him ruler in Egypt, to bring his people to Egypt. God has purpose for Joseph. Of course God has purpose in my life as well. Well putting God's glasses on really helped.

[17:00] Now, I wish it was super easy for you to just go online and order some of God's glasses and put them on and take care of this, but it's not that easy.

[17:09] It takes a little bit more time. But I want to give you three prescriptive steps here to take so that you can get some of God's glasses and start using them. Number one, pray. That's one simple prayer that I pray a lot is this. When bad things happen, God, thank you for this event. Thank you for this happened. and I know you brought this into my life for a reason. Help me to learn what you want me to learn in this circumstance. Thank you. In short, help me to learn from this circumstance what you want me to learn, period.

[17:44] Things happen to us for our benefit, for us to learn from it. Number two is to know God. Get to know God better. The better you get to know God, the more easily you'll be able to trust Him. You get to know God by spending time with Him, by reading the Bible, talking to other people about God, spending time at church, listening to godly teaching, get to know God on a daily basis. And number three, which is a little bit more abstract and to the point, you just have to trust him. You have to trust God and trust that God that He knows better about life than you do. You are sitting in front of the train watching all these boxcars racing by. God is back and he sees your whole life and realizes that this incident here and this incident here is going to lead up to something good later on. You and I don't always see that, but God does see that. Three characteristics of God that will help you trust him more really quick. First of all.

[18:46] God is love. God is love and he loves you more than you love you. God is love and he wants what is best for you more than you want what's best for you. How awesome is that? Number two, God is all-knowing. And since God is all-knowing, he knows what is best for you a whole lot more than you know what's best for you. And finally, three, God is all-powerful, and he will enable you to be accomplished whatever he calls you through, whatever he has for you, he will give you the strength to get through it.

[19:19] My friends, if you want peace and joy and contentment in this life, you must see life from God's perspective. Apart from life, apart from God, I think life doesn't make sense. Your business not operating well will not make sense if you're not wearing God's glasses. I encourage you to put God's glasses on and see life from his perspective today, right now, before you race off to the next podcast, before you go to work, or wherever you're going to do, I encourage you to stop. Take 60 seconds of your time and ask the opening question, how am I viewing life today? Through what lens am I viewing this world? Because if you're not viewing life through God's perspective, through God's glasses, you need to start. When business is going hard or going sideways, remember, and ask the question, what is God's purpose in this happening in my life?

[20:16] And when things are going well and prosperous, ask the same question. What is God's purpose for this going on in my life? And finally, what is one thing that you can do today that will help you start to see life from God's perspective?

[20:30] I hope you have enjoyed this show. If you did, I encourage you to hit the subscribe button so new episodes will be downloaded automatically. I'd also appreciate if you'd leave me a five-star review of this podcast as it helps to get the message out to others who need the encouragement and inspiration to run their business for the glory of God. And make sure to check out our show notes for a summary of all the points that we have talked about during this episode. And I'll see you next time. And remember, time has limits. Only one thing is needful, so do it.